Thirteen O'clock

by C.M. Kornbluth

Put them all together...A clock whose hands point to 13 o'clock...a land of witches and demons where sorcery is the key to success, until American know-how takes over...a bewildered soldier-of-fortune in a future where heroes are unknown...a gorgeous female robot, programmed to arouse human desire, and wreak inhuman vengeance...a sofa filled with deadly invaders of Earth...a space ship designed to destroy itself...an eerie desert where life and death are one...

...and you have C.M. Kornbluth's special brand of SF magic in a must-read gathering of unforgettable triumph.

Originally published stroies under the pseudonym Cecil Corwin

Contents:

• Preface - essay by James Blish
• Thirteen O'Clock (1941) - novella
• The Rocket of 1955 - (1939)
• What Sorghum Says - (1941)
• Crisis! - (1942)
• The Reversible Revolutions - (1941)
• The City in the Sofa - (1941)
• The Golden Road - (1942)
• MS. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie - (1957)

Genres: Science Fiction

33 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 1, 1970

About the author

Cyril M. Kornbluth grew up in Inwood in New York City. As a teenager, he became a member of the Futurians, the influential group of science fiction fans and writers. While a member of the Futurians, he met and became friends with Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl, Donald A. Wollheim, Robert A. W. Lowndes, and his future wife Mary Byers. He also participated in the Fantasy Amateur Press Association.

Kornbluth served in the US Army during World War II (European Theatre). He received a Bronze Star for his service in the Battle of the Bulge, where he served as a member of a heavy machine gun crew. Upon his discharge, he returned to finish his education, which had been interrupted by the war, at the University of Chicago. While living in Chicago he also worked at Trans-Radio Press, a news wire service. In 1951 he started writing full time, returning to the East Coast where he collaborated on a number of novels with his old Futurian friends Frederik Pohl and Judith Merril (as Cyril Judd).

He used a variety of pen-names: Cecil Corwin, S. D. Gottesman, Edward J. Bellin, Kenneth Falconer, Walter C. Davies, Simon Eisner, Jordan Park, Arthur Cooke, Paul Dennis Lavond and Scott Mariner.

Reviews

[Manuel Alfonseca · Rating 2 out of 5]

ENGLISH: This review deals with the first and last stories in this collection, the only ones I have. I couldn't find a bibliographic record for those two stories in Goodreads.

The first story ("Thirteen O'Clock") is not sci-fi, but fantasy, and a queer crazy kind of fantasy, at that, with lots of strange beings: kraken, dragons, volcano nymphs, spitting-fire dogs, a sorcerer with a blast-finger...

The other story ("Manuscript found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie") is sci-fi, and a queer crazy kind of sci-fi, with a fragmentary unfinished manuscript written on cigarette papers distributed with Chinese fortune cookies manufactured in an asylum for mad people.

ESPAÑOL: Esta reseña trata sobre los relatos primero y último de esta colección, los único que tengo. No pude encontrar en Goodreads una ficha bibliográfica para los dos relatos aislados.

El primer relato ("Las Trece en Punto") no es ciencia ficción, sino fantasía, una fantasía un tanto peculiar y desmadrada, con muchos seres raros: krakens, dragones, ninfas volcánicas, perros que escupen fuego, una hechicera con un dedo explosivo...

El otro relato ("Manuscrito encontrado en una galleta china de la suerte") es ciencia-ficción, un tanto peculiar y desmadrada, sobre un manuscrito fragmentario e inacabado escrito en papeles de envolver cigarrillos distribuidos con galletas chinas de la suerte fabricadas en un manicomio.

[Mack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parody of fantasy? Creative, brilliant, off-kilter, funny, wordy.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

These stories (except the last) were written under the Cecil Corwin pseudonym, possibly to separate these pure fantasy stories from Kornbluth's SF writing. The stories are all amusing and fun to read, but the most fun thing is the last story, which was published as a Kornbluth story and included Corwin as a character. This story enabled Kornbluth to "do away" with Corwin for ever.

[Karen Eichler · Rating 3 out of 5]

According to the Preface, a collection of C.M. Kornbluth (under the pen name Cecil Corwin) short fantasy stories is rare. As a fan of fantasy, I was interested, but I don't think these stories are quite what I think of when I hear "fantasy". The stories were interesting, but more scifi or maybe just "odd" tales that didn't quite fit any genre. If you're a fan of C.M. Kornbluth, you'll want to check these out. Modern fans of fantasy stories will probably not find what they're looking for here. The collection has:
Thirteen O'clock
The Rocket of 1955
What Sorghum Says
Crisis
The Reversible Revolutions
The City in the Sofa
The Golden Road
Ms. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie

[Thomas R · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought and read this book in 1970/1971 when I was 15/16 years of age. C.M. Korbluth was and is a writer of stories that I have enjoyed over the years. Picking this book up again at the start of 2026, I thought would be an enjoyable read. It contains eight stories - the best being "The Golden Road" and it is definitely a good story. Almost all the others are purely humorous and poke fun at politics, and other governmental services through fantasy and science-fictional settings. The best of those is "What Sorghum Says" - a story that R.A. Lafferty would love. Needless to say if you like that type of story you may want to rate this book higher than 2-stars.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

Early work by Kornbluth, and nowhere near to his best. However, it does contain The Rocket of 1955, which is pure story-telling craftmanship in a very short story.

[Peter Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Please give me a helpful vote at https://www.amazon.com/review/R2WDQVA...

This is a very minor - essentially forgotten - work from a very great writer.

C. M. Kornbluth died much too young, after writing some great science fiction short stories and novels. He undoubtedly had in him a novel that would have redefined science fiction if time had permitted him to write it.

This short story is entertaining but minor. Peter Packer inherits his grandfather's house. He discovers a strange clock that goes to "13" and - boom, zoom - Peter slips into an alternate universe where magic seems to work. The magical universe is a parody of our own with trolls and anachronistic resemblances to mid-20th Century America. Peter meets a girl, loses the girl, rescues the girl and gets home again. It is thoroughly predictable and all in good fun. Kornbluth was just playing around with this story.

The average reader can pass this by and never miss it. A modern reader might find it curiously dated. On the other other hand, if you are a fan of the great writers of science fiction, you will want to read this as a guilty pleasure.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a common misconception that - until Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett - science fiction and fantasy were serious and po-faced. This collection of stories by Cyril Kornbluth, written during the 1940s under the pseudonym Cecil Corwin, are proof that this was not the case. Wryly humorous (usually whimsical, but at times laugh-out-loud funny) are a bit dated (they are a product of their time, after all), but also show themselves to be surprisingly timeless. The title story in particular (originally published as two separate short stories), is a excellent, and a clear evolutionary "missing link" between Narnia and Discworld. The first half of that story (originally published alone as a short story with the same title in 1941) is a gem, and the remainder of the book is not that much less enjoyable.

[William Laing · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cyril Kornbluth, who died in 1958 at the age of 34, was one of the best writers of the heroic age of SF. A lifespan as long as Asimov or Clarke would have seen him equal and in some ways surpass them: humour, characterisation and satirical acuity come to mind. I think I'm right in believing that he would have excelled in whatever branch of fiction he chose. This breadth of mind shows in most of his work.
The present story is a reminder of just how young this writer started. Some enthusiasms are slightly callow--he uses the word "grotesquely" with a schoolboy abandon that made me smile as I shuddered. TO'C has only a glimmer of the great visionary-comedy-hardboiled-satire (The Cosmic Charge Account, Two Dooms) to come, but all Kornbluth is to be treasured.

[bluetyson]

Thirteen o'Clock and Other Zero Hours by C. M. Kornbluth (1970)

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Goofy nonsense that I can't get into.